Minor League Pay

[calsnowskier]

They aren't even making minimum wage, though. They're below the poverty line and may have to pay for housing. It's teetering on the edge of being an exclusive game to those who can afford the lulls. Most of these players ARE paying to play organized baseball every year.

To play a game. That millions do, in fact, pay to play.

 

[Sandisfan]

And getting those players at bargain basement prices shouldn’t be hard to do. The job is a friggin kids game.

coal mining is something people do ONLY for the money. No kid lies awake at night dreaming of same day making it to the big dig. And it is a VERY dangerous profession. Those guys deserve to be paid and get lots of benefits.

Minor league ball players are competing with tons of other people who have dreamed of this job their entire lives. Hell, every town has multiple leagues where people PAY to play the game in an organized fashion.

I am not an ogre. I want these kids to be able to eat. But I lose no sleep if these kids are making min wage. They are playing a game. And the prospects are essentially in school, so again, they will get paid later (or got paid by a nice signing bonus).

What you say has some good amount of truth, but the MLB needs the best from Non-Prospects otherwise you may as well have your real prospects play underhand softball with amateur playground leagues. If you don't have an incentive to waste part of your real life work career and not advance your, after minor league, career then you could have too few teams and challenging environments for Real Prospects to grow their game. So there is a minimum incentive to keep enough teams filled with enough challenging teammates/opponents.

 

[calsnowskier]

What you say has some good amount of truth, but the MLB needs the best from Non-Prospects otherwise you may as well have your real prospects play underhand softball with amateur playground leagues. If you don't have an incentive to waste part of your real life work career and not advance your, after minor league, career then you could have too few teams and challenging environments for Real Prospects to grow their game. So there is a minimum incentive to keep enough teams filled with enough challenging teammates/opponents.

Sure. But they will always have kids going after a dream. That is clear because they currently have a deep pool to pull from. If they were not getting the talent they needed, they would raise the wages voluntarily. So that really isn’t a factor, imho.

so the question is two-fold...

1) are they paid too little

2) should they be paid more


I think we can agree (???) that we are only talking about “non-prospects” here. True prospects typically have received signing bonuses. Some large (Joey Bart), some small (Joey Sixteenth-Rounder). My ignorant understanding is that both of these players pull down the same salary, assuming they play for the same team. There are some escalators for pay based on years and highest level, but assuming same experience and same level reached, the salaries are the same.

Assuming the check shown by Cyr is accurate for his entire 2019 season (his tweet was actually very misleading as he claims it is for a AAA championship player, when in reality, he only appeared in one game for Sacto and spent the vast bulk of the season with Richmond), than a AA player with some 40-man time on his resume makes a little north of 10k. I assume he gets a daily stipend as well, which, I believe, does not count as income. Granted, 10k is a pittance. But he doesn’t mention that he got a 100k signing bonus when he was drafted. He isn’t rich. Far from it. But he isn’t missing meals, either. And if he is, he is chasing a dream. It is the path he has chosen.

 

[SF11704]

Interesting discussion ... from my point of view ... for the non-prospect

1. To us (the average fan) Baseball is a game. But it's only a game because we never had the skills to actually pursue a career in baseball. At this point in these people's life it is a career choice ... not necessarily a game.

2. The only market these people have for their baseball skills is MLB itself. Since all MLB teams seem to have the same 'program' for minor leagues ... how close is that to a form of collusion?

3. Let's look at what a graduate with an engineering degree from a top school (in engineering) might make on the internship circuit. To me, having an internship is similar to being a minor league player to some extent. You are in a tryout mode. Looking at some of the top technical internships (MS, Google, Amazon, etc) they range in the $90,000 to the $70,000 bracket. To me what allows this to happen is that the companies themselves are competing with each other for the same person. The incentive packages that they offer can be and will be very different. All the companies see the potential and are actively competing with each other for the person, but in the end it is the person (candidate) that makes the choice. In a MLB setting I don't believe the candidate has the same opportunity. All the incentives seem to be about the same .... and none seem to be very good financially ...

Never having the skills to play any sport professionally it's very difficult for me to put my self in the shoes of a minor league player. I have no way of balancing the sacrifice to the eventual reward. But, as Cal has already stated ... the reward is ... very very substantial. For a once in a lifetime opportunity .... what would you sacrifice?

 

[calsnowskier]

Interesting discussion ... from my point of view ... for the non-prospect

1. To us (the average fan) Baseball is a game. But it's only a game because we never had the skills to actually pursue a career in baseball. At this point in these people's life it is a career choice ... not necessarily a game.

2. The only market these people have for their baseball skills is MLB itself. Since all MLB teams seem to have the same 'program' for minor leagues ... how close is that to a form of collusion?

3. Let's look at what a graduate with an engineering degree from a top school (in engineering) might make on the internship circuit. To me, having an internship is similar to being a minor league player to some extent. You are in a tryout mode. Looking at some of the top technical internships (MS, Google, Amazon, etc) they range in the $90,000 to the $70,000 bracket. To me what allows this to happen is that the companies themselves are competing with each other for the same person. The incentive packages that they offer can be and will be very different. All the companies see the potential and are actively competing with each other for the person, but in the end it is the person (candidate) that makes the choice. In a MLB setting I don't believe the candidate has the same opportunity. All the incentives seem to be about the same .... and none seem to be very good financially ...

Never having the skills to play any sport professionally it's very difficult for me to put my self in the shoes of a minor league player. I have no way of balancing the sacrifice to the eventual reward. But, as Cal has already stated ... the reward is ... very very substantial. For a once in a lifetime opportunity .... what would you sacrifice?

But how many of the kids coming out of school get those 90k internships? 1%? 10%? 25%? How would those compare to the signing bonus’ that the top 1%, 10%, 25% get?

The anti-collusion exemption that MLB has is a legit issue. But does that really apply at the minor league level? The international league exists and it has no affiliation to MLB.

 

[SFGRTB]

MLB is increasing minor league pay starting in 2021. The Giants are going to start a year early, and pay a little bit more than the mandated amount (for housing). Pretty cool.

AAA players will get $750 a week (pre tax I'm assuming) and an additional $500 monthly stipend for housing.

AA will get $600 a week, plus the stipend.

A ball (San Jose and Augusta) will get $500 weekly, but no stipend. San Jose players are all already housed with host families if they choose (been that way forever), and the Giants are offering free housing to Augusta players this year, which is somewhat vague. Not sure what they have to offer.

Short Season leagues are all increased to $400 but no housing offered. At least Salem and Arizona are pretty cheap places to live compared to the rest of their minor league cities.

Overall much better. The article says that this increase costs the Giants at least $500,000 a year. And to that I say, come on.... this is a drop in the bucket. That being said, cool to see the Giants are serious about investing in the minor leagues even in what's very likely going to be a down year, especially in the financial books. These are things that we won't see in our day to day, but pay off in the long term.

 

[LHG]

MLB is increasing minor league pay starting in 2021. The Giants are going to start a year early, and pay a little bit more than the mandated amount (for housing). Pretty cool.

AAA players will get $750 a week (pre tax I'm assuming) and an additional $500 monthly stipend for housing.

AA will get $600 a week, plus the stipend.

A ball (San Jose and Augusta) will get $500 weekly, but no stipend. San Jose players are all already housed with host families if they choose (been that way forever), and the Giants are offering free housing to Augusta players this year, which is somewhat vague. Not sure what they have to offer.

Short Season leagues are all increased to $400 but no housing offered. At least Salem and Arizona are pretty cheap places to live compared to the rest of their minor league cities.

Overall much better. The article says that this increase costs the Giants at least $500,000 a year. And to that I say, come on.... this is a drop in the bucket. That being said, cool to see the Giants are serious about investing in the minor leagues even in what's very likely going to be a down year, especially in the financial books. These are things that we won't see in our day to day, but pay off in the long term.